


Make it Real

by OverWroughtThought



Category: Acquisitions Inc., Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), The "C" Team
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Metaphysical Philosophizing, Recovery, change, second-guessing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 14:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13661205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverWroughtThought/pseuds/OverWroughtThought
Summary: In the dead of night, someone has been making changes to the Dran & Courtier.  Prophetess won't rest until she catches the person responsible.





	Make it Real

At first, Prophetess suspected Rosie was the culprit.  
  
Most people would not have noticed the changes each morning, but Prophetess was hardly most people.  She knew every inch of her tavern.  Every scratch in the wood, every scuff on the floor, every tiny imperfection.  In many ways, the Inn had become an extension of herself.  She had poured sweat, blood, and tears into this place.  She had filled it with her laughter and love, her loss and grief.  It was more than a building.  It was a house for her soul.    
  
The Dran & Courtier was a homey sort of place, where you felt the history down to the stone.  Prophetess took pains to make sure it was also a clean place, but all the same she was just one person.  Sometimes the common sense choice between one last polish and a minute more rest sent her to bed with just a few things left undone.  That list of lapsed chores had only grown since her daughter's return.  She mollified herself with the knowledge that her patrons would understand.  Or at the very least, that few would notice.  
  
Yet each morning she had come downstairs to find those tasks done.  Apparently in the dead of night.  Ashes cleared from the fireplace.  Dust swept from the mantle.  Windows cleaned.  
  
She decided to confront Rosie during one of their early morning baking sessions.  Roise blended with Prophetess' flow effortlessly, kneading dough while Prophetess tested the oven, fetching a forgotten ingredient before it could be asked for.  It was not a large space, yet they never bumped into each other.  They moved through the room the way two fighters might battle back-to-back.  It was a martial dance defined not by bones broken and blood shed, but by flour, sugar, butter and salt.  
  
Scones in the oven, Prophetess wiped flour from her hands onto her well worn apron.  
  
"You needn't go to the trouble," she said.  "I appreciate the thought, mind you, but I can handle things well enough."  
  
"I've no doubt of that," the elderly halfling replied.  "But I do miss the simple pleasure of baking.  I always appreciate it when you grant me the favor of using your kitchen."  
  
"No, I don't mean this," Prophetess said, stacking used bowls that needed cleaning.  She gestured vaguely to the main room.  "I mean…all the little things in there.  It's too much, late at night like that."  
  
Rosie's perplexed expression was answer enough.  She was not the one responsible.  
  
Prophetess' next thought was concern for her daughter.  Auspicia had been unpredictable since her return.  Some of her behaviors were decidedly…odd.  The young woman tried so hard to be helpful.  To adjust with minimal fuss. Yet Prophetess knew from her own adventures that recovery was often a long and difficult road.  Was Auspicia wandering the tavern at night, trying to set things right?  
  
She tried not to worry, but the idea had her up into the early hours, wandering down the hall to peer into her daughter's room.  Each time she paused with her hand on the door, paralyzed by an old and familiar fear.  Irrationally convinced that she would look inside and find Auspicia gone once more.  Years ago she'd walked to this same door, night after night, and each time found the room empty.  
  
She pushed it open.  
  
Yes, Auspicia was still there.  Still sleeping.  Peaceful.  It was all right.  It was all going to be all right.  She quieted shaking hands and returned to bed for another restless hour.  
  
In the morning, the bar was so well polished that she could see her own face reflected in it.  And the nick near the end...was simply gone.  Sanded and oiled, as though it had never been.  
  
It troubled her.  Old scars should be allowed to fade, not removed.  You couldn't just smooth away the rough edges and pretend they'd never been.  
  
She decided that night she would stay at the bar until dawn.  
  
Her vigil began as the last few stragglers stumbled their way home near midnight.  She pushed in chairs and swept floors, anything to keep busy and awake.  As she straightened the window curtain, she noticed it.  Outside.  A light in the carriage house.    
  
Her first thought was fire.  She hurled open the door and ran.  She expected to hear Coriander's unearthly whinny, a sound that vibrated with a metallic edge that no ordinary animal could replicate.    
  
Yet all was quiet.  Her footsteps slowed.  She sniffed the air.  No smoke.  The light that glimmered under the heavy wooden door was a warm golden glow that did not flicker.  
  
Prophetess quieted her steps, crouched low.  She carefully began to ease the door open, yet the hinges moved smoothly, not even a hint of its former squeak.  It seemed her mystery maid had taken to cleaning the carriage house too.  Her mouth set in a grim line.  She would know who had taken up these tasks, unbidden, and dared to keep her in the dark in her own domain.  She threw the door wide on well oiled hinges.  
  
For an instant, the scene was illuminated with complete clarity.  Then the light vanished.  Prophetess was left in utter darkness.  She blinked, fumbling her way forward, but the room was now empty save for Coriander.  The beast nudged her, nibbling at her coin purse.  Prophetess pushed the horse away gently, squinting in the dim illumination provided by the cart's gaudily glowing undercarriage.  There was a dark square in the center of the floor.  She knelt down and picked it up.    
  
A ratty length of tattered velvet.  
  
She confronted K'thriss with the incriminating fabric in the morning, but he was even more confused than Rosie had been.  She insisted he look her in the eyes, or at least face her directly with his bandaged head held high rather than bowed deferentially.  It was a habit he often struggled with, tending towards gestures of obeisance in a matriarchal presence.    
  
"I assure you, Velvet and the Glowman are not animate.  Merely extensions of my will.  In the hours you name, I was deep in meditation, and they cannot act independently.  They are…" he hesitated, and when he continued, the words seemed to pain him.  "They are not _real_.  Even if…one might sometimes wish them to be."  
  
He took the tattered fabric in his hands, turning it over.  A strained half-chuckle weakly covered the awkward silence.  He bowed and turned away.  
  
She watched him go, hand on the bar, feeling for the nick that was no longer there.    
  
"Is it possible," she began, and he paused, his hand on the railing of the stairs.  "…for a place to become more than a place?"    
  
He turned, head cocked quizzically to the side.  "In what manner?" he asked.  
  
She sighed, making a vague gesture that encompassed the room which she belatedly remembered he could not see.  Prophetess huffed, grasping for words.  
  
"Sometimes I feel like this old building has…a spirit of its own.  Like I've put so much of myself into it, that it's not just the Dran  & Courtier anymore.  It's…it's the _Dran & Courtier_ now."  She imbued the name with special meaning, touching the counter top fondly.  
  
K'thriss smiled.  "I admit, I have never met a friendlier building.  Or one more generous with a boat for a traveler in need."  
  
She gave him an odd look that he missed entirely, his mild smile unchanging.  Prophetess concluded that this was an Underdark saying that did not parse well.  K'thriss ran his finger down the railing pensively.  
  
"The universe is full of possibilities beyond what we can comprehend.  Perhaps…perhaps it is possible for a place to take on a greater character.  After all, a building can be blessed or cursed.  Maybe with enough time, a space can become imbued with a certain…independent essence."  
  
"If that's true, couldn't things that are not real…become real?"  
  
He stilled, thumb pausing where it had moved across the worn velvet in his hand.  
  
"I…don't know.  I don't think so," he said sadly.  
  
Prophetess regarded him in silence a moment.  Then she huffed, arms crossed.  
  
"Sometimes things get broken.  Lost."  She glanced in the direction of Auspicia's door.  "We can't undo that.  It's important to remember.  Even if it hurts."  
  
K'thriss nodded.    
  
"Agreed.  Although, sometimes…"  He turned his face away, trailing off.  "Sometimes…I can't help but wonder what it would be like to go back.  Pull at the threads of time and make things right.  I know it's a fool's errand.  I've tried it before.  But a part of me still…"  
  
"Can't let go?"  
  
He nodded.  
  
"Omin was like that.  After…"  Prophetess swallowed, and pushed onward.  "I learned to move on.  He never did and I always thought…"  She shook her head.  "I can't spend my days thinking that if I'd tried harder, if I'd believed him, I would have gotten her back sooner.  What matters is she's here now."  
  
She ran her hand over the counter again, searching for the nick, never finding it, feeling it like a phantom on her skin.  
  
"Sometimes we keep old hurts raw, because if we let them heal…we have to accept that things have really changed.  That they've become real."  
  
"Which means you have something real to lose," he added softly.  It sounded as though he was speaking more to himself than to her.  
  
Prophetess picked up her familiar rag, idly polishing a glass.  She set it down with a sense of finality.  
  
"You know what?  I don't mind.  _Whoever_ is doing the odd jobs around here.  The Dran  & Courtier will always be the Dran & Courtier, but that doesn't mean it can't change.  I've given it enough on my own.  It's time to let others add to it too.  In whatever fashion they're able."  
  
She began setting more glasses on the bar, giving her hands something to work with.  "Next time you see that little Velvet fellow and his Glowman friend, you tell them thanks for me."  
  
"As you wish, but as I told you, it's not --"  
  
"Humor me," she said.  And left no room for argument.  
  
  

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching the Season Two intro, with the addition of some of K'thriss' friends, and couldn't help but wonder what they might get up to if left to their own devices. What if some constructs could act not on conscious thought, but unconscious will?


End file.
